(Trinidad Express) “Ungrateful monsters!” This is how several Nigerian doctors described the person who shot and killed their colleague, Dr Chudi Ezezue, in the yard of his 22 Ninth Street, Barataria apartment late Thursday night.
Ezezue, 44, a surgical doctor at the Intensive Care Unit of the Port of Spain General Hospital, was shot in the head by an unknown assailant, who police believe waited for the victim’s arrival home. The killing, up to late yesterday, remained a mystery for homicide detectives, who have ruled out robbery as nothing was taken from Ezezue, a father of two young children.
The doctor, who had been working here since 2006, lived at the apartment with his Nigerian wife, Dr Amaka Ezezue, and their children. Amaka is assigned to the Special Babies Unit at the PoSGH. She declined to speak to the media outside the Forensic Science Centre in St James after her husband’s autopsy on Friday.
“Imagine a man [Ezezue] who does save the lives of criminals and other people when they come into the hospital with gunshot wounds or whatever type of injuries, they turn around and kill. That is heartlessness and they are ungrateful monsters,” a Nigerian doctor stated.
Musa John Jen, Nigerian High Commissioner to this country, described the killing as unfortunate in a telephone interview Friday. Jen said he was a very close friend of Ezezue, whom he had seen minutes before the incident.
“He’s a very outgoing character, very friendly and nice outgoing person.
It’s really unfortunate and the fact is we no longer know from which direction to even begin to comprehend what happened, because this is not somebody under normal circumstances, I think, who would antagonise people to the extent that somebody would lay and ambush and kill him outright,” Jen said.
“It’s really a shock and I don’t know whether it was a planned murder or someone tried to rob him and he resisted.
We attend the same church [Chapel of Joy] so he’s somebody I know very, very well. He’s my friend in fact and he was in my house yesterday [Thursday] and he left to go home and then I was informed that he was shot.”
Jen, who said he immediately went to Ezezue’s home when he heard of the incident, expressed optimism that the local police would solve the crime. He said Ezezue’s relatives in Nigeria have been informed about the incident and his body will be flown back to his native land for burial.
One of Ezezue’s colleagues, Dr Norbert Enweluzor, said his colleagues were deeply saddened by the incident, since many of them were in the profession of saving lives.
“We feel so sad that this could happen to a doctor who has just gotten into his compound for someone to just approach him and shoot him. We have been affected by the crime situation and it’s our hope that this crime situation be controlled because it’s going to affect everybody,” Enweluzor told the Express.
According to police, around 10.30 pm, Ezezue arrived at his home and was ambushed and shot. Amaka, who was at home with their children, came out to investigate after hearing gunshots and found her husband in a pool of blood. PCs Marvin Pinder and Seals are probing the incident.
